


Covered In The Colours; Pulled Apart at the Seams

by AU_Ruler



Series: faded colours and stars [3]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Character Death, Constellation AU, Episode: s01e22 The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!, Forced Mutism, Gen, Sensory Deprivation, Whumptober 2020, but it does happen in-story, constellation della duck, it's not graphic, no.24, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27013783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AU_Ruler/pseuds/AU_Ruler
Summary: She's never lost her voice like this before
Series: faded colours and stars [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968796
Kudos: 22
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Covered In The Colours; Pulled Apart at the Seams

Della couldn't hear anything after Uncle Scrooge cut out. The bolt that hit her took out  _ everything _ . The lights, the engines, the radio. Not even a hiss of static survived. 

When the bolt jolted the spear, her helmet hit the metal console. A hairline fracture bloomed down the visor from the top to her bill.

A second later the ship made a final sound. The magnetic lock that kept the hatch closed turned off with a click, no longer having any power to keep it active. Della’s fingers went to the door but they missed. It opened slowly. Lifting up, allowing all of space into the shuttle. As it opened, Della searched. She wouldn't be able to last long with a cracked helmet. Too much air would leak from it like a broken pressure valve. Different objects floated out the door and away from the shuttle as she rummaged. There had to be tape somewhere. Or  _ something _ that would work to fix the crack in her helmet. Eventually she came across a small pack of gum. It held five pieces. All  _ liquorice  _ flavoured. Della scrunched up her beak. Disgusting. Still, it was the only thing she had. She took out a piece. When she let go of the pack, it floated off with the rest of the objects. 

For a moment she fumbled with the wrapping. As the pack floated she noticed the small script on it. ‘Provides oxygen as you chew’. For a second she merely blinked at it. The gum would provide oxygen. So she wouldn’t need to worry to much about how quickly she maneuvered to chew the gum and stick it to the crack. All she  _ needed _ was the gum. Hopefully just one piece would give her enough time to- To what? Della looked around her. All the blinking lights, dead. The engines, dead.  _ Her _ , alive. The picture was still on the dashboard. Her family looked at her through it. Determination flooded her veins. Give her enough time to get the ship running again. Impulsively she grabbed the picture and tucked it in the suit, right over her heart. That way her family would be with her as she worked. She nodded to herself. She could do this.

She opened the wrapper forcefully. It ripped. The piece floated

away

away

away.

Della grit her teeth so she didn't waste air on grumbling. Even if she wanted to. Instead bent her legs against the chair. And launched herself toward it. She pushed too hard. Her body floated right past the gum. Further out into space.

“Oh,  _ phooey _ .”

There was only one way to propel herself back to the gum. It was risky. But if she made it, then it wouldn’t matter. She removed the tube that brought air from her helmet. A quick calculation and she held it at an angle behind her. It didn’t give her much movement. The original plan hadn’t included leaving the shuttle. So she didn’t have a lot of air in the tank to begin with. What she’d had left only moved her a few tantalizing inches.

It wasn’t enough.

_ it wasn’t enough _

The gum was still too far for her to grab.

Time passed quietly. There was no longer air to leak from the crack in her helmet. She still tried to get to the gum. But no matter what she did, she didn’t move an inch.

In frustration Della opened her mouth. A bubble of sound came out. Her voice carried before it suddenly stopped. Like the sound hit an impenetrable wall. She’d heard before that you couldn’t hear in space. There was something unsettling about the reality. When she opened her mouth again, nothing came out. And yet. Words.

It was like she could  _ just almost  _ hear her own voice. Wavery and moving like an old tv in her mind. There was noise, then it was gone. Faded to nothing. The silence pressed on her. Heavy and dark like when she’d fallen in the lake at her grandparents and almost drowned before Donald pulled her out.

Losing air was another unsettling feeling. It was one thing to lose air under water. In a place you could push up and up and up and find it once more. But to lose it in a place where there is no end, where your body says it should be able to breath, is another.

Della took the picture from her suit. The eggs were in center frame and Scrooge, Donald, and herself smiled at the camera. It was one of the days Gladstone was at the mansion. They’d gotten him to take the picture. The picture looked almost vignetted. She knew it hadn’t been.

Della took her eyes to the sky. To the bright stars around her. The earth below and the moon above. Her body hung in the between. Stuck on a thread, tied to both. Kept from her final destination,  _ just _ able to see it. Her eyes went to the picture again. With a sigh, there was no noise, no breath, but that no longer mattered, and clutched it to her heart.  _ Everything _ began to fade. The blackness of space getting darker. Creeping into the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes.


End file.
